At a Media Roundtable event yesterday, Volkswagen Passenger Cars Malaysia’s directors gave an update on how the company had fared after its first full year.
VPCM delivered 6536 cars in 2017. 94.5% of those were locally-assembled. It’s an approvement over 2016’s numbers (I believe 8%), in spite of the overall industry slowdown.
On the aftersales front, VPCM’s internal data shows that the DQ200 issue has been resolved on the newer cars. And no clutch replacement required for cars produced 2015 onwards and the mechatronic unit replacements are at a 5 year low. Whether this has anything to do with the 5 year Manufacturer Warranty of older Volkswagens being over or not would have been difficult to determine.
Overall, repeat repairs were also brought down from an all-time high in 2014. However, no exact numbers were shown. Florian Steiner indicated that there was still improvements to be made, so it would be safe to assume that the Y-Axis on these charts don’t begin with ‘0’ at the bottom.
The opening of the new training centre has seen a big jump in dealer staff competence, which VPCM says is reflected in their data. Their dedicated social media team has also been busy addressing customer complaints and halting the spread of false information.
In terms of parts sourcing, 95% of relevant parts can be ordered from the current regional warehouse. And dealers can now accurately estimate lead time depending on the kinds of parts being ordered.
In 2018, they plan on keeping the momentum, sales-wise, with ‘sustainable growth’. A new ‘3 year free maintenance’ program was recently launched for all new Volkswagens sold in 2018. Aftersales initiatives and creative brand engagement is planned.
They’re also moving their regional parts warehouse from Singapore to Tanjung Pelepas, Johor. That should be done by September and handled by a separate entity.
Erik Winter hinted that the new Golf would be brought in as an import model sometime this year. He added that locally-assembling the car was out of the question. Our prediction for Mercedes-Benz Malaysia’s 2018 was that they’d start to locally assemble the upcoming A-Class or the current GLA. If this does happen, that new Golf is going to have its work cut out for it. But we’re glad it’s coming. Other models, like the new Polo and Arteon, may find their way to Malaysia but nothing is final. The electric vehicles may not be brought in just yet.
